Word: ceuta
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Evidence of radical infiltration was clearest last December, when Spanish police swooped on the neighborhood and arrested 11 men, seven of whom were charged with planning attacks in Ceuta and on the Spanish mainland, and sent to prison. The men were, according to investigating judge Balthazar Garzón, "moving from fanatical discourse to action...
...hard to see why Príncipe, home to 12,000 of the Ceuta's 27,000 Muslims, is an easy target for radicals. The neighborhood is sorely lacking in everything from police and sanitation services to job opportunities. But there's no shortage of weapons on the streets - a legacy of Ceuta's days as a drug trafficking center, before a police crackdown - and residents have repeatedly taken out their anger on local law enforcement officers by stoning police cars and torching the area's sole police post...
...conditions that prevail in Príncipe than on the danger of radical infiltration: "Príncipe's problems are subhuman living conditions, an administration that ignores us, and police who still call us 'moors.'" Says Mohamed Ali, leader of the Ceuti Democratic Union, an opposition political party. "Ceuta is two cities. All of the institutions, and all of the investments go to the center; the Príncipe gets nothing...
Despite the concerns, Spanish government delegate to Ceuta Jenaro Garcia-Arreciado insists the city is safe. "Certainly we're closer to terrorist nuclei, but the threat isn't any greater here than on the mainland. And given all the security forces in Ceuta, we are, paradoxically, one of the safest cities in Spain." He points out that with the help of Morocco, which appoints Ceuta's imams, the city keeps radical messages out of Príncipe's mosques. But Yalila Liazid, director of the Sidi Embarek Koranic school and daughter of Ceuta's most important imam...
Liazid believes the media exaggerates Ceuta's problems, and that on the whole the city is a model for religious and ethnic harmony. Still, she admits to having visited the troubled neighborhood next door just three times in her life. Her hair wrapped in a canary yellow scarf, she gestures toward Príncipe. "That," she says, "is a forgotten neighborhood...